


She Tends Her Garden

by Dorksidefiker



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:17:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorksidefiker/pseuds/Dorksidefiker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Man in the Moon couldn't have described what their relationship was, even if he tried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Tends Her Garden

It's unfair to say that the Man in the Moon never gets lonely. He is, after all, a sentient being, and it is a truly rare individual who _never_ longs for the company of others. He has is Lunar Moths, and his Moon Mice, but they really aren't much company. The world that he spins around and in turn spins below him makes for a pleasantly endless diversion, but it is not always enough.

It's not that he doesn't want to speak to people. It's that he _can't_. His ship, his moon, is as much a prison to him as it is a home. Under even the best of circumstances, to leave would be to make himself horribly vulnerable. He's not sure he'd survive a trip to the surface of the little world he watches over.

He does his best to reach out to his Guardians, but his best (and theirs) is not good enough. Communication remains painfully, frustratingly crude. There are times -- _years_ \-- where he throws up his hands in frustration. The Guardians will do what they do anyhow, no matter what he might say to them.

There are only two who understand him easily, and they both hate him.

Pitch speaks to him surprisingly often, but much of what he says are the ravings of a lunatic, and so he does not listen, and rarely answers.

Mother Nature is more... complex. She is not so much older than he (less than two decades, _nothing_ to beings who live for millions of years if they so choose), and she is not insane. Probably. There are times when it's genuinely hard to tell. She remembers the Golden Age (which more and more feels like a long ago dream to the Man in the Moon, who was little more than a baby when Pitch's darkness swept through the cosmos), and in a happier universe she would have been one of his subjects. She likes to remind him of this, when she can be coaxed into speaking, calling him "Your Majesty," and "My Tsar." She does this to be cruel; he is Tsar of nothing, heir to dust and emptiness.

As often as not, she draws heavy clouds across the the sky and ignores him as she tends to her garden. He watches as she creates and destroys, seemingly at random, and as the guides the seasons from Spring to Summer to Fall to Winter. Her garden is her one true passion, and when she speaks to him of it, she is almost friendly. Sometimes, she sends him messages in the shapes of her storms; after all these millenia, she is the only one who remembers his birthday.

When he claims Jack Frost, the powers he grants the child are meant to be a tribute, but she refuses to speak to him for over a century.

Perhaps _hate_ is the wrong word to describe how Mother Nature feels about the Man in the Moon. 'Resents' might be more accurate, but not wholly correct. She is no more naturally inclined towards solitude than he, and while she walks the world he can watch only from a distance, she is easily as isolated as he. Mortal lives are brief, especially compared to the lifespan Mother Nature would have enjoyed if she had remained mortal. Even the longest lived of them are gone in less than two centuries. The other spirits prefer to keep their distance; the humans call the Moon inconsistent, but the Man in the Moon thinks that title suits Mother Nature far better... though perhaps her reputation amongst the others would not be what it was if those first spirits who sought her as an ally had not plotted to destroy Pitch Black.

She refused to involve herself in the Boogeyman's schemes one way or another, but all the stars help those who sought his death, for she was not at all subtle in dealing with them.

And so, she is as alone as he. Perhaps that is why she sometimes answered when he spoke to her; better contact with someone you don't like than none at all.

Sometimes, she talks to him first. On the days when it's too much, when she can no longer stand the lack of recognition when Pitch Black looks at her.

Mother Nature is not beautiful when she cries. Her eyes go puffy quickly, and her skin becomes blotchy. Her nose runs, and there is something disgustingly phlegmy about her voice when she speaks between sobs. She mourns for an age long gone, and a father she is slowly forgetting (and that confession breaks the Man in the Moon's heart; he does not remember his parents' voices, and he imagines that forgetting something like that much be a very great tragedy indeed), and all the things she has seen pass in her long life.

They speak of the things they have seen, when the mood strikes them. Empires rise and fall like sandcastles on the beach beneath the gaze of Mother Nature and the Man in the Moon, remembered only by them and whatever other spirits have marked their passing. She is one of the few constants in his life, and he for her.

He loves her, not that he will ever tell her so, out of fear of what she might do. The Man in the Moon isn't sure which would be worse: to be mocked, or to have her cease speaking to him altogether. He does not expect her to reciprocate; there is too much history there.

Mother Nature tends to her garden, and the Man in the Moon tends to his children. It is what it is, and what it will always be.


End file.
